


White Ink

by Bonetree (Todesfuge)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 19:56:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4535274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesfuge/pseuds/Bonetree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In December 2012, a battered Mulder, Scully and William know there's much more at stake than just the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Ink

WHITE INK

 

God, give us each our own death, the dying that proceeds from  
each of our lives:

the way we loved, the meanings we made, our need.

\- Rilke, "O Herr, gib jedem seinen eignen Tod"

 

****

"I am alive because I perceive that I live..."

 

17 LILY ROCK VISTA  
IDYLLWILD, CALIFORNIA  
DECEMBER 1, 2012  
7:32 a.m.

(20 DAYS UNTIL INVASION)

 

Something about the coming of the first day of December had  
caused a change in all of them. This wasn't surprising  
considering that according to all they knew, the first day of  
winter would signal an Eternal Winter, that Christmas would  
never come this year or again, and that there would be no New  
Year to welcome in this, the Last Year on Earth. 

She tried not to think about this, but it was hard when  
everything - even the persistent snow that fell here in the  
mountains - seemed to remind her of endings. Even the smells of  
the old house they'd let for more than they could afford, even  
in the off-season, were of something decaying. The cedar  
shingles and their ripe aroma that seeped through the windows.  
The smell of vague mildew on the rugs that hadn't been cleaned  
since the summer tenants had returned to the city. The foggy  
aroma of the vaporizer she would always associate with sickness  
from when she was a child. Even the sheets beneath her - worn  
and soft - seemed used up, their faint blue pilled from too much  
time in the wash.

The persistent smell of blood in her nose reminded her of it,  
as well, the taste of it in the back of her throat. Every time  
she woke from sleep - often these days, since the cancer had  
settled in, making itself warm and comfortable behind the mask  
of her face - Scully had the strange and certain feeling that,  
while sleeping, she had been consuming herself.

This morning, when she opened her eyes and took in the light  
coming through the picture window - drapeless, as they had no  
neighbors, all the other houses vacant for the hard mountain  
winter - she tried to forget what day it was. As she reached  
for a dingy white washcloth on top of the pile of them on the  
night table -- a neat stack William had placed there the night  
before to catch the warm seep of blood from her nose -- she  
tried to see only the snow and how beautiful it was against the  
backdrop of evergreen. 

None of her attempts worked, of course, because there was no  
denying the date or the blood or any of it. They were running  
out of time, in more ways than she could describe.

She rolled over, holding the washcloth against her face, almost  
welcoming the blood's warmth. The house was cold, and she  
burrowed deeper into the mound of blankets gathered on her side  
of the bed. Mulder moved them over her every night, his body  
dealing with the chill of the house much better than hers. The  
cloth against her face, she looked over and saw a small scrap of  
paper folded on his pillow, reached out and took it in her hand,  
fingering it thoughtfully before she opened it. 

Things had been so strained lately she was a bit afraid of what  
it might say. Since William had appeared at their door six  
weeks before, there was a wall made of something between them,  
the boy's 11-year-old body seeming to build it brick by  
invisible brick.

Fingering the paper, she blinked past the dull headache, the  
pressure behind her eye, kept her eyes closed. No, that wasn't  
fair, she concluded, talking hard to herself. It wasn't  
William's fault. The fissures had been there for years.

When had they begun? 

Regretfully, she conjured the source behind her closed eyes. 

The night in Pincher Creek in Alberta three years ago, and the  
following morning when Mulder had gone off with their daughter's  
body wrapped in a towel, tucking the four-month's premature baby  
inside his jacket as though care mattered. She'd cried harder  
than she could ever remember, something inside her shattered  
from watching him move away with the bundle against his chest,  
from the night when she'd delivered the tiny body with only  
Mulder there beside her, quiet and grim, his arm curled beneath  
her neck on the bed like a wing. 

Their mission to stop the invasion depended on *their* safety,  
not their daughter's, the baby a totally unexpected and  
unwelcome surprise. They could not risk themselves to save her,  
and though the decision to remain in the cabin in hiding had  
been Scully's, bit out through the contractions' pain, something  
in her blamed him - and herself - just the same.

Mulder had left with the girl as soon as it grew light, come  
back several hours later with dirt beneath his nails, clots of  
mud on the knees of his jeans where he'd clearly been resting on  
the spring rain-drenched ground for some time. 

The cracks had started then, as surely as the lines that had  
crept in and creased both their faces with hard years. She was  
48, but looked worn, and Mulder's hair and beard were so shot  
with gray he looked older than his 51 years.

To blame William for the strain between them was pointless and  
unfair. He had done nothing but push the breaks wide enough  
that she and Mulder could no longer pretend they weren't there. 

They'd done well, she had long thought, with how much they'd  
had against them - years of running and dead-end leads. Phone  
calls she'd made and received from phone booths outside diners  
in pouring rain and heat and snow so deep they'd been trapped in  
motels for weeks. Doggett and Reyes and Skinner and Kersh  
answering phones, writing down addresses for P.O. boxes and  
General Deliveries across dozens of states. 

Too many cars to count stolen and ditched, too many hours in  
thrift stores picking up clothes and chintzy, chipped kitchen  
things to cook in motels' dirty kitchenettes. Stops on  
roadsides in the darkness, Mulder's mouth on hers, his hands  
under coats and thin shirts, her fingers clenching in his long,  
then short, hair. Desperate lovemaking, their worn suitcases  
still perched at the foot of a hundred beds.

Cars they thought were following them. A phone's warning ring  
in the darkness to Reyes' or Doggett's or Skinner's voice, or  
Kersh's tight-lipped, quick answer to her or Mulder's groggy  
answer of "yes?": 

"They know where you are. Get moving again." 

Then the #10 envelopes arriving with D.C. postmarks with  
newspaper clippings of "unidentified bodies" found in landfills,  
lakes, alleyways. One with a photo under a Richmond, Virginia  
bridge, page nine of the Times-Dispatch, and scrawled in black  
letters at the top in Skinner's hand: "Doggett." 

A woman wrapped in a rug in a landfill after months of no phone  
calls, Reyes' kind voice pushing through the static: "Reyes."

One, three years ago, from Kersh, his small writing as neat as  
type along the article's title ("Authorities Baffled by F.B.I.  
Assistant Director's Disappearance"): "Stay put and lay low for  
awhile." 

Skinner had not been heard from again. 

A year ago, the box had come to the house they'd rented in  
Saskatchewan, the hard drives and CD drives and tiny CD-ROMs,  
the laptop and desktop computers in their plain brown boxes. It  
was the last thing they'd heard from Kersh, and they assumed  
he, too, was gone.

She could still remember the pain of the headset as she'd sat  
frozen in the chair. She could remember Mulder squeezing her  
hand as she'd endured it, how she'd held his as he did the  
same. 

Lying there, she could hear the drives turning in the other  
room, just beyond the thin door opened to a crack. They whirred  
and clicked, a constant electric sighing punctuated with  
occasional beeps like a heart. 

The bleeding was slowing and her hand went limp to let the  
washcloth slip to the pillowcase, her other still holding the  
scrap of paper. She took in a breath and opened it, focused on  
the tiny lines of writing inside:

I love you Rest Don't lose hope

She heard William moving around in the kitchen, making her tea  
and an egg and a single piece of toast. The quiet sounds of him  
mixed with the computers' white noises and she dozed, waiting  
for him to come to her, listening until she couldn't tell her  
son from the machines or the silent, falling snow. 

*****

 

"I am aware of the possibility of death (the absence of life)..."

 

DEVIL'S SLIDE TRAIL  
BENEATH TAHQUITZ PEAK  
IDYLLWILD, CALIFORNIA  
11:24 a.m.

 

The ten-man crew for the California Conservation Service was up  
Devil's Slide two months past the time that tourists were  
allowed to apply for permits to hike to the peak, and Mulder,  
stepping in aluminum snowshoes up the trail with his pack of  
equipment for the fifth day in a row, was getting a clear  
understanding of why they were alone in this wilderness. It had  
snowed nearly two feet in two weeks, and the trail was getting  
more and more difficult to find as they rose toward the peak. 

Mulder had joined the small group of rangers and Forestry  
Service personnel to take samples of the trees' cores, the area  
under study for some kind of blight. His fellow workers were  
all friendly, occasionally boisterous men who laughed a lot when  
they weren't working, like now, all of them having taken the  
break for lunch early and gathered around several large camp  
stoves holding iron skillets and steaming silver pots. 

Mulder kept his eyes on the circle of them as he lifted one  
foot after the other, the snow crunching beneath his wide, light  
shoes. His breath steamed out in front of him, and there was a  
faint trace of frost on his beard that was lost in the gray.  
His black coat tapped with the fall of the heavy flakes, but it  
and his thermal underwear and heavy jeans, his socks and his  
boots, kept him warm. The hours of climbing up and down the  
trail with the 40-pound pack did a good job toward that, as  
well. He'd even shed his black stocking cap, the one with the  
"NY" for the Yankees sewn into its front, his forehead dewed  
with sweat.

"Hey John!" Paul Sterling called from the circle of warmth,  
his voice echoing amongst the pines. 

They were so green, Mulder thought. So green against the other  
trees whose leaves were gone, their trunks and branches black as  
pitch but wearing their robes of white.

"Where the hell have you been?" Sean Burke added. "We were  
about to eat your sausage and potatoes and send out a search  
party!"

"In that order," Jay Finney laughed, and the others joined in.  
Mulder smiled.

"Corer got hung up," he said as he drew near. Though he loved  
hearing their laughter and loud voices, his own had grown quiet  
over the years, and besides, he didn't like to disturb the quiet  
of the mountain in its snow.

It was only partly true. The coring tool had lodged in a  
pine's fat, fallen trunk, but when he couldn't remove it after a  
few tugs, he'd simply cleared off a space and sat, his feet on  
his open pack, his hands out of their gloves and cupping a  
silver thermos of coffee they'd made at the base camp at the  
trail's head. 

He'd sat for a long time simply holding the cup. He'd looked  
down into the coffee's surface and watched his oily reflection  
in the black, listening to the flurries and their taps. He  
barely recognized himself in the face looking back at him. 

He had promised himself years ago, when he'd turned 30, that he  
would never regret the choices he made to give his life to this.  
Staring at the face in all that black, he made the promise again.

"Who the fuck are you kidding?" the face seemed to say in  
return. "Twenty days and you'll have officially pissed  
everything away."

He closed his eyes. "There's still time..."

"Yes," he heard a familiar voice beside him. "There is still  
time, Mulder."

He opened his eyes, and John Byers - looking like he should be  
shivering himself to death in that suit of his, if he were alive  
\- was sitting there. He gave Mulder that same kindly smile he  
always wore, and as always happened when he or one of the other  
Gunmen appeared to him from the ether, he felt a lump in his  
throat.

"John," he said by way of greeting, and sipped his coffee, his  
eyes going straight ahead. 

"You don't believe me, do you?" Byers said, crossing his arms  
over his chest. He sighed.

"You'll have to pardon me if I'm a little on the pessimistic  
side these days, Byers," Mulder said quietly. "I don't have a  
hell of a lot to look on that's going well."

"You've got the computers going," Byers replied. "They're  
working."

"I gotta tell you, John," Mulder said bitterly. "Besides the  
fact that I still have a headache from putting what's in my head  
onto that thing - and it was almost a *year ago* we did that, by  
the way - I don't have a fucking clue how all that works to this  
day."

"We've explained it to you before." It was Langley now on his  
other side, looking ridiculous in his black T-shirt and his  
glasses specked with snow. "You know how it works."

"Yeah, yeah," Mulder said, irritated now. "Mind uploading. My  
memories and Scully's memories ripped out of our heads and  
copied onto those CDs in their little tiny boxes whirring around  
and Kersh's files on another and all of them rolling around  
together in some glorified Ronco Virtual Blender of Information  
and trying to figure all this out." 

"Oversimplified as usual, but yeah," Frohike said from behind  
Byers. Mulder hadn't even seen him appear. "It's cold as hell  
out here, Mulder. You couldn't find work inside?"

Mulder chuffed, took another sip of his coffee, made a face to  
find it had already gone mostly cold. 

"You don't know how much of an idiot I felt like tapping that  
question Kersh told me input into the laptop. 'How can we  
prevent the invasion on 12/21/12?' I felt like I was nine years  
old with my Magic 8 Ball, for Christ's sake." He tossed the  
coffee into the snow.

"You had a Magic 8 Ball?" Langley asked, and Mulder scowled at  
him. 

"You'll pardon me if I'm not quite so amused," he said, started  
gathering his things, standing to go after the coring tool  
again. Langley scooted over to give him room.

"I know it's hard," Byers said. "The waiting, I mean. But  
you've got to give it more time. Everything you and Scully know  
about the aliens, the X-Files...everything you've ever  
experienced is copied onto those disks. And everything Kersh  
could find in the X-Files and in the F.B.I. is on the other.  
The answer's there. It's somewhere there. You know it is,  
Mulder. You would have given up years ago if you didn't believe  
the answer was there."

"I don't believe in anything anymore," he said softly, pulling  
on the tool. He turned the handle to unscrew it, wood squeaking  
against the metal. 

"You're talking to us, aren't you?" Frohike said. "If you  
didn't believe in something you sure as shit wouldn't see us  
standing here."

"Oh, let me correct myself then," Mulder said, his voice  
strained from turning the tool's heavy handled screw. "I  
*believe* I've lost my mind. That much is true." 

"Bullshit," Langley said. "You know why you see us."

Mulder kept turning, the wood creaking. "The abduction," he  
said after a moment. 

"Yes," Byers said, just as quietly.

"They did something to my mind." He didn't look up as he said  
it. The probes going into his nose...the saw across his  
chest...opening... 

He closed his eyes, stood still. His breath puffed out in  
front of his face, the memory quickening his breath.

"I'm sorry, Mulder," Frohike said. "I know it was hard."

Mulder shook his head, shaking off his friend's sympathy, the  
memories. "Some things are harder," he said noncommittally,  
returning to the stubborn tool and its wood.

"She's handling it really well, though," Byers said gently.  
"Considering."

"Yeah," Mulder chuffed. "*Considering.* No doctors." He  
pulled. "No chemo." Pull. "No painkillers." Pull. "No  
nothing." He wrenched, his anger behind the words. "Nothing!" 

On the last word, the tool came free, and he was nearly toppled  
over as it did. 

"I need to take her to a hospital," he said, wiping at his nose  
with his bare hand. "This is ridiculous. She should be  
comfortable for the few days we have left. I don't want her in  
this kind of pain anymore." 

"They'll find you," Byers said. "And they'll find the disks.  
You'll destroy any chance of stopping them if you do." 

"And they'll find William," Frohike said. "And that can't  
happen," he added. "Not ever."

Mulder looked at him. "Why?" he asked. 

"We don't know," Langley said, and Mulder turned to him, the  
quiet pressing in as all four went silent for a beat. 

"The answer is on those disks, Mulder," Frohike said, finally  
breaking the silence. "Somewhere in the things you don't  
remember about your time with the aliens, in Scully's time with  
them that she can't recall. It's got something to do with  
William and with her chip and her illness and with you and with  
the X-Files. The disks will figure it out."

"Yeah," Mulder said, putting the tool down in the slot designed  
for it in his back. He closed up the thermos, stored it away.  
"I'd love to stay and chat..." 

He looked up. Nothing but snow and trees and quiet. No one  
there at all.

He shook his head, shouldered the pack, and started back toward  
the rendezvous point for lunch, following the faint sound of  
Finney, who was singing.

"'I love to go swimming with bow-legged women and swim between  
their legs! Swim between their legs! Swim between their  
legs...'"

Now that he was with them, he took the pack off again, the  
smell of sausage and coffee somehow a comfort. 

"Love your singing, Finney," he said. "I could hear you a mile  
away."

"Good damn thing, John, or we'd lose you in the snow," Finney  
said, patting the log they sat on with a smile. "Take a load  
off and we'll fix you a plate."

 

*****

"One is either alive or dead at any point in time, not both."

 

17 LILY ROCK VISTA  
4:46 p.m.

 

William Andrew Mulder was not an ordinary little boy. 

His adoptive parents had not, apparently, cared for "Fox" as a  
middle name, and Scully couldn't exactly blame them. She had  
always loved Mulder's strange and seldom used first name, but  
she loved it because of *him,* because it was part of who he  
was. The family that had adopted William (she had never known  
their name) had changed it to "Andrew," called him "Andy" as a  
family nickname. 

William had told her this when he'd arrived that night six  
weeks ago, appearing as if by magic from the dark, but had asked  
that they call him "William" just the same.

She wondered if he'd done it to please them, or, more  
accurately her, she who had stumbled over "Andy" as her shaking  
hands had tried to pour him something hot to drink. She  
couldn't remember now if it was cocoa or coffee or tea. She  
only remembered the sound the mug made when she'd try to lift it  
and had dropped it on the floor instead. 

She watched him from across the chessboard at the kitchen  
table, the way his small hand cupped his small chin to consider  
the pieces in the game. It was a medical fact that the eyes did  
not, actually, age. She knew this, that they looked (barring  
disease) perpetually the same. Still, there was something  
strange about looking into his 11-year-old face, one that looked  
so strikingly of Mulder (dark hair, strong nose, full lips), and  
see the same wide blue eyes set into it, blue as sky or  
turquoise, and shot with flecks of gray. 

He reached out, not meeting her stare, and moved a piece,  
tapping her Bishop's base as he lifted it away. "Knight takes  
Bishop," he said, still studying the board. 

She smiled. "You're very good at this," she said softly. 

He looked up now, a small and very adult smile on his face.  
"Yes, but I'd be less so if you'd concentrate less on me and  
more on the game." 

It still surprised her to hear him speak. His voice was wry  
and articulate and devoid of accent. He said he'd grown up in  
the Dakotas, but he sounded like he'd come from Nowhere, his  
dialect flat as a newscaster's. 

"Probably so," she said softly, and reached for her tea. 

"We can play your game while we're doing this, if you'd like,"  
he said, his fist on his cheek. He looked up her, his lip  
quirking again as she looked into his eyes again. 

"Am I that transparent?" she asked, reaching for her Queen. 

"Only to Mulder and to me," he replied. "Watch my Rook, by the  
way."

Her hand hovered over the board, touched the Queen and left it.  
She took a sip of the tea, set it down again, and selected  
another piece.

"Knight to King Seven," she said, and he nodded, seeming  
pleased. "Check."

"Ask me anything you wish." 

Since he'd come to them, she'd asked mostly innocent questions -  
his likes and dislikes. How was he at math and did he like  
horses or sports? What were his favorite color and food and  
thing to drink? What had his parents gotten him for his  
birthdays? Did he like winter or summer or fall or spring, and  
had he ever read "The Giver" or flown in an airplane or broken  
anything?

She had asked him the first night how he'd found them, and he'd  
come all this way from the Plains. Mulder had stood with his  
hands in his pockets, silent, against the counter in the  
kitchen, staring, a pulse of muscle along his jaw every few  
beats. 

William had looked at his father with those wide, bright eyes,  
then told her he was tired, taken his duffel bag to the back  
bedroom where Mulder'd led him and gone to sleep.

Once, she'd asked him if his parents would be worried about him  
disappearing like this. They'd washed half the dinner's dishes  
in the house's silver sink, him washing and her drying them as  
best she could, sitting in a chair when her legs had tired and  
gone weak. 

"No," he said, dipping his hand into the water for an errant,  
sharp knife. He was tall for his age, the bottom of the deep  
sink easily within his reach. "They don't worry about anything  
anymore."

She'd swallowed and hadn't asked anything like that again.

As though he could read her mind, his eyes still on the board,  
he said again: "Ask me what you wish," reaching for a piece and  
then withdrawing his hand to further consider his choice. 

It was getting dark outside. Mulder would be home before it  
turned from blue to black.

"I don't know what to ask," she said. She was tired and felt  
weak, unable all day to keep anything but the toast and egg down.

She looked outside at the outline of Lily Rock and wished  
Mulder were home already. He and William were not comfortable  
with one another and William was less...William when he was  
around. 

"Sure you do." His hand hovered again.

She swallowed. Her mouth was dry. "How did your parents die?"  
she asked, her eyes still on the mountain's top.

William picked up a piece. "Queen takes Rook. Check." He set  
the castle-shaped piece down with the others he'd won. "They  
were killed, of course. Though, to argue semantics and fact, my  
real parents are still alive. In their own way."

Though she was already the color of paper, she blanched at the  
bluntness of his words. "How did you get here, William?"

He looked up. "That, I can't say." 

"How did you know where we were?" she pressed. Now that the  
first question was out, caught like a stopper on the rest, they  
started spilling from her mouth.

"Nor can I tell you that." He tapped the board. "Your move."

"Damn it, William, I don't care about the game!" she said,  
though raising her voice beyond the low tone she'd been using  
made her cheek and eye ache. "Tell me. In a few weeks none of  
this will matter anyway. Please."

He looked up at her, his face solemn. "They always knew I was  
different," he said. "Always. From the start. They deduced  
very early on I would eventually be in danger for who and what I  
am, and they always knew who you were and how to find you,  
though I don't know how or why they'd want to know that part.  
We had a lot of visitors to the house starting about three years  
ago. When I stopped going to school. When we stopped going  
out." He tapped the board again. "Check."

She looked down at the board, taking it in, though there were  
tears lodging behind her eyes. She grabbed a piece and moved  
it, a pawn off to the side. 

"You're right, you don't care about the game," he said softly,  
and she heard the Jeep coming in the drive, a rake of headlights  
going through the front window off to their side. 

William reached out and tipped her King over, nodded to the  
computers to their right, their whirring, the CDs throwing small  
rainbows onto the wall, reflecting the small desk lamp light as  
they spun, beeping and humming into the room's dark. 

"You lost this one because of frustration and by abdicating,"  
he said, touching the board, then pointed to the computers. 

She stared.

He smiled faintly. "Try not to do it again." 

 

*****

 

"A perfect copy of a thing that is alive will result in a new  
thing which is alive..."

 

17 LILY ROCK VISTA  
IDYLLWILD, CALIFORNIA  
10:02 p.m.  
DECEMBER 12, 2012

(10 DAYS TO INVASION)

 

William had taken himself early to bed after the three of them  
had had a parody of a family dinner at the heavy kitchen table,  
Mulder somehow ending up at the head of the table with his elbow  
on the wood and unable to meet either Scully or William's eyes  
as he ate. 

Part of Mulder's distraction at dinner had been exhaustion, and  
he tried to hang onto that as his excuse when Scully mentioned  
some time later, the two of them sitting at the computer and  
watching the scroll of files go by faster than the human brain -  
the organic one - could consciously retain. 

He and the crew had gone all the way to the base of Suicide  
Rock, so named because of the legend of an Indian Princess who  
chose to leap from its height with her lover rather than marry a  
man her father had chosen for her whom she did not love. His  
back and legs ached from the steady incline and then the steady  
descent in snowshoes as the snow turned into sleet and then rain.

"You didn't have to say what you did to him," Scully said  
quietly when she asked him what was wrong and he'd begged off  
with his profession of fatigue. 

It had pricked anger in him, and he'd found himself stalking  
into the kitchen for a drink out of the carton of orange juice,  
foregoing the glass in his haste to be doing something with his  
hands.

What he'd said was to tell William to stop talking in riddles.  
What he'd said he'd said with a bite worthy of a bulldog at a  
pup. 

"The computers are moving through the files nicely," the boy  
had said, cutting into his chicken with the manners of the  
King. 

"You mean our minds?" Mulder grumbled, pointing his fork at he  
and Scully without looking up.

"Yes," William replied patiently. Mulder had been aware of  
Scully halting with a bite of her own unspiced piece halfway to  
her mouth. "That's what I said - the files. Yours and the ones  
from the F.B.I." The boy kept eating, chewing before he spoke  
again. "The progress bar says they're 85% through the  
interface. I'd give them three or four more days before they  
give us our solution."

"*IF* they give us one," Mulder said under his breath, stabbing  
at his food. Looking back, he realized he probably appeared  
fairly petulant as he'd done it. 

"They're giving one right now," William asserted quietly. "But  
it's like they're writing it out on a sheet of white paper,  
using white ink." 

That's when he'd bitten, and William had put down his fork and  
knife, excused himself politely to Scully and vanished into the  
guest room off the long hall and closed the door.

He stood at the doorway to the kitchen, looking at her with her  
glasses on, the screen making her eyes appear to glow in her  
face. Her mouth was the angry, thin line he'd known for what  
seemed his whole life. He saw it every time he fucked something  
up.

"You're defending him again," he snapped. 

"I'm defending the one who deserves defending," she shot back,  
looking up from the empty email inbox, the fourth one they had  
that she'd checked. Her eyes could have burned a hole through  
him into the doorframe. "If he - or anyone - attacked you like  
that, I'd do the same for you. A fact you seem to be forgetting  
lately."

He looked away, wiped orange juice from his mostly-salt  
moustache. He was glad for the beard in the cold, but very few  
other places, the kitchen not one of them. 

"Scully, for Christ's sake..." He trailed off. "Why don't you  
just say what you really want to say?"

"What is it I want to say?" she asked, arching an eyebrow above  
the rim of her reading glasses, her red hair - dimmer now, and  
long -- pulled away from her face into a pony-tail that trailed  
down her back. It accentuated the gauntness and ghostly pallor  
of her face.

"That you think the way I treat him is appalling," he said,  
angry. "I can see it in your face every time I'm with him-" 

"I have *never* said that, Mulder," she shot back. "But I'm  
glad you're self-aware enough to know it's true."

"I--!"

"You treat him like he's a leper, Mulder! You ignore him and  
you won't look at him. You snap at him and silence him and  
avoid him!" She stood from the desk chair, holding onto the  
desk for support as she rose. Her face had taken on an unusual  
flush. 

"What do you want from me, Scully?" He couldn't help but  
shout. "What do you want me to treat him like? He's CREEPY. I  
don't even think he's HUMAN, for God's sake! He's-"

"He is my SON!" she screamed, the sound tearing around the room  
and shocking him with its pitch, its desperation. Tears burst  
from her eyes. The hand she held on the table was shaking.  
"And he's YOUR SON, too!" 

By the time she got the last of it out, all of her was shaking,  
and her free hand had gone to her face, to wipe the tears he  
thought at first, to cover her mouth to catch the sob. Then he  
saw the blood, and his anger vanished into air. 

"Scully," he said softly. "Scully, don't-"

And then she was sliding down, and the carton was in the middle  
of a puddle of orange on the floor, and he caught her as she  
fell. 

He was pressing the sleeve of his fleece shirt against her  
face, staunching the flow of blood (both nostrils now, he noted  
grimly) and trying to lift her when a small hand offered him a  
washcloth, his eyes focusing on it as he stilled. 

He followed the arm up to William's sad, pale face. "Not for  
me," the boy whispered. "Never for me."

Mulder didn't know what to say to that. The words - and the  
sadness they implied - left him thunderstruck. All he could do  
was take the cloth, put it to Scully's face, lift her small form  
into his arms and walk to the bedroom, her head against his  
chest. 

As he turned to push the door closed with his foot, facing the  
computers and the kitchen again, he saw William move silently to  
the spill on the floor with a dishrag on the table and begin  
cleaning up the mess.

 

*****

"An imperfect copy of a thing that is alive will most likely be  
alive too, but it may behave differently than the original."

 

NORTH MOUNTAIN ROAD  
OUTSIDE IDYLLWILD, CALIFORNIA  
9:14 p.m.  
DECEMBER 15, 2012

(SIX DAYS TO INVASION)

 

The rain had again turned to snow, and though Mulder had  
welcomed it on the worksite, finally not spending a day  
miserable and cold and wet up at Tahquitz, the drive home was  
proving treacherous. His Jeep Wrangler - bought in Hemmet for  
$2000 of their last $4000 of cash - growled along the road, its  
four-wheel drive digging in but black ice beneath the white  
causing it to lose its grip. He kept his face forward, his  
hands gripping the wheel as tightly as could, the seatbelt  
grabbing him as the vehicle slid suddenly from left to right,  
and he yanked it back straight again.

He was finally away from the upper mountain's curves,  
descending through the woods toward town, though his headlights  
and the fog lamps, lighting up the snow to the point that the  
refraction on the huge flakes nearly blinded him, were the only  
guides he had down the pass. 

The computers were at 92%. They had six days to not only get  
the solution to the invasion but to put it into place.

Too late, he said to himself. 

It was too late. 

"Perhaps not," a familiar voice said from beside him, and he  
heard an intake of air like a hiss. The cab of the Jeep  
suddenly filled with pungent gray smoke from a Morley. He  
didn't have to look to the side to know who he'd find grinning  
there.

"If it isn't the gargoyle," he said, gritting his teeth as the  
Jeep started to lose its feet again.

"In the flesh," Spender said, and Mulder could hear the smile  
in his oily voice. "Well, so to speak."

"What do you want?" Mulder asked. This was one visitation he  
could do without. And he didn't want to look over and see the  
wild white hair and the smoke coming from the old man's throat.  
"Too hot in Hell so you'd thought you'd hit the slopes?"

"Mulder," Spender tisked, and Mulder chanced a look. "Is that  
any way to talk to your father? Your own son gives you so much  
more. And you're not nearly as kind to him as I've been to you."

"Yeah, you're a peach," Mulder replied, relieved to see Spender  
as he'd known him first, the gray Reagan-era hair and the cheap  
suit, his wide lips smiling that odd smile, slid back to show  
his teeth. 

"Scully's dying," Spender said softly, and Mulder could swear  
he heard regret.

"No shit." 

"No, I mean imminently. She'll be lucky to make it to the Date."

"Won't we all," Mulder bit out. "Now fuck off."

They were rounding a wide, arcing corner, the Jeep sliding but  
hanging on around the curve. The snow was falling too heavily,  
the lights too bright. Mulder was dazzled by the snowflakes,  
large as eyes, and he had to train his own to look between them  
to keep his eyes on the road. 

"I want you to tell your son his real name," Spender said,  
breaking into Mulder's concentration.

"He knows his name." Another slip.

"He doesn't know his middle name. His *real* middle name. I  
want you to tell it to him."

"Why?" Mulder asked. That one word had seemed to become his  
*own* middle name in the past ten years. The deaths, the  
running, all of it. Why?

Spender ignored him. "What was your daughter's name?"

Mulder felt his mouth go dry, his tongue feeling like a wad of  
cotton in his mouth. "She never had a name," he lied, and  
Spender chuffed, drawing in another puff of smoke.

"Of course she had a name," he said. "Scully must have named  
her. If not before she was...born...then certainly after."

He swallowed at the memory. The flat stone he'd found in  
Pincher Creek to place over the fresh, wet dirt. The scratching  
of stone on stone, his breath catching in his throat...

"What did you write?" Spender said softly. 

Mulder chanced a hand off the wheel long enough to give his  
eyes a rough swipe. 

"What was it, Mulder?" His voice was soft, almost soothing,  
almost...

"Grace." 

He could see Spender nod from the corner of his eye, the smile  
finally off his strangely creased face. 

"Tell your son his name, Fox," Spender said softly. "Tell him  
his name is 'Fox.' And then tell him hers. Tell him about  
Grace, and all that she's done." Then he was gone.

Mulder swiped his eyes again, turned onto Lily Rock Vista, the  
snow socking in, a wall of falling white. That's why when the  
deer darted out in front of him he didn't see it until its side  
had smashed into the Jeep's high grill, the impact startling him  
into the roadside's shallow ditch.

In the sudden quiet as he cut the engine, Mulder climbed down  
from his seat, found his feet in the snow there, pulling his hat  
down a bit more on his forehead against the frigid air. The fog  
lights were still on, pointed at where the deer had been thrown,  
its still brown shape. 

A few meters to it, and he was standing against its side,  
against the widening pool of red. He knelt, put a hand on the  
doe's side, his bare hand smoothing down the longer, winter  
coat. 

"I'm sorry," he whispered, and the tears were still in his  
eyes. He closed them, felt something moving up from his chest  
with enough pressure to choke. 

His hand gripped the doe's soft side, his other hand covering  
his face.

The snow fell silent around him, covering everything with its  
white.

"I'm sorry," he said again, the sob catching his breath. "I'm  
so sorry, Grace..."

 

*****

 

"In merger, two (or more) living things are brought together in  
one substance..."

 

17 LILY ROCK VISTA  
IDYLLWILD, CALIFORNIA  
11:55 p.m.  
DECEMBER 17, 2012

(FOUR DAYS TO INVASION)

 

"I want..."

She was dreaming again. About the field of flowers all  
opening, and the boy and the girl there, and the mountain in the  
distance, the white snowcap of it, the white outcropping of  
rock. The white cap that gave off that beautiful, golden  
light...

(Shhhh...shhh...it's okay...)

"Mulder, I want..."

(Scully, it's okay.)

She opened her eyes to the pressure behind her eyes, to  
Mulder's face over hers from where he'd leaned over from where  
he was perched on the edge of the bed. He tried to smile. He  
tried to let it at least touch his eyes, but there was nothing  
but grief there.

He hadn't been to work in two days. The vaporizer hissed from  
the floor, the bedside table's yellow lamp the only light. 

"You were dreaming," Mulder said softly, brushing back her hair  
from her face. 

She nodded. She wore one of his T-shirts, underwear and  
nothing else. It seemed stiflingly hot, though she remembered  
being cold when she'd fallen asleep.

"What were you dreaming?" Mulder asked. His voice was smooth  
as old sheets. 

She drew in a breath, wiped at her face, clearing away sleep  
like it were a web she'd wandered through. "Something about the  
baby," she said softly. "Something about...William and the  
baby..."

Mulder shook his head. "Don't think about that now," he said. 

Now...

At the end of everything.

"Will you do something for me?" she asked. She reached up to  
touch his face, caressing what would be laugh lines at the  
corners of his eyes in some other time or place.

"Anything," he said softly. 

"Make love with me," she breathed. The light seemed terribly  
bright.

His brow creased down. "Scully, we can't..." he began, shaking  
his head. "You're-"

"I know," she whispered, nodding, her hand trailing down from  
the corner of his eye to his cheek, down to his throat. 

"I'll hurt you," he said softly, as though he were afraid  
William would hear. "I don't want to hurt you, Scully." 

She shook her head, gathered herself to lean up, her arms going  
around his neck, holding herself there. "Mulder..." she  
whispered. "Please..."

**

Outside the door, his face glowing in the computer light,  
William sat at the desk and watched the load bar's blue move the  
last few millimeters from left to right. 

"100% INTERFACE COMPLETE," the screen stated in its black  
letters on white. 

He smiled, his fingers dancing on the keyboard. 

Username. 

Password create...

Enter.

"HELLO WILLIAM FOX MULDER. UPLOAD READY." 

He reached for the headset, the metal nodes resting against his  
small temples, his eyes covered with its visor fitted with two  
tiny plasma screens. 

They lit up as he touched the control on the side. 

"YOU MAY COMMENCE." 

**

She pressed her head into the pillow, arched her back.

He was kneeling between her legs, his hands smoothing her  
shoulders to her breasts to her waist. Her hands gripped his  
wrists and drew his hands down over her flat belly. So thin.  
She knew she was so thin, and that he seemed afraid to touch her  
with the certainty he'd once had, though his eyes were black  
with desire, his chest rising and falling with the quickening of  
his breath.

He curved his hands around her hips, moved toward her slowly,  
leaning down. Her legs went around his thighs, his hips, his  
waist. 

"Yes," she said to him, to herself. "Please..."

"Tell me-"

"Yes-"

"Scully-"

Then he was inside her again, his body draping over her. She  
drew in a breath at how warm she felt, his chest on her chest,  
his face against her throat. She'd been freezing for months.

"I love you," she whispered into his hair. Her back arched  
again, her hips pressed against him, straining to push him  
deeper inside her until what wasn't him and wasn't her  
disappeared.

His mouth was on hers, his arms bracketing her face, and she  
opened beneath him, feeling no pain, no grief, only herself  
opening like a fist. 

Opening like an eye, or a flower. Like a door or a gift. 

**

William whimpered against the pain.

He hissed out the words, his teeth clenched:

"Abduction...chip...baby...cancer...experiments... Changed.  
All changed. They changed..."

Tears poured from his eyes, though he squeezed them shut. 

Yes. It made sense now. It all made sense.

"It's me...Mother...Mulder...blood to blood to blood."

He smiled, the images dancing before him, coughing out the pain  
behind his eyes, shut tight. 

"Blood...then the mountaintop," he whispered. "Blood to blood.  
And then blood into light."

 

******

 

"Two brains are adjoined and connections allowing activity to  
pass freely from one brain to another are allowed."

 

6:31 a.m.  
DECEMBER 18, 2012

(THREE DAYS TO INVASION)

 

It had been so long since he'd slept naked with her, warm skin  
against skin, that Mulder almost didn't awake when he heard the  
sounds of things breaking from the other room. He hadn't slept  
so soundly in so long, his body used to the mountain snow, he  
and Scully's distance like frost...

But then he remembered William and the date. He remembered the  
newspaper clippings and the bodies of Doggett and Reyes. He  
remembered faces of men without faces and flame, and Rohrer and-

He was standing as the images all rushed in. He was pulling on  
his long-john bottoms as the sounds of things smashing kept  
going, again and again.

"William!" he called, rushing to the door. He heard Scully  
stirring in the bed and calling his name.

He threw open the door to the living room and pulled up short. 

William was there by the computers. He had the metal  
sledgehammer Mulder used for coring from the pack by the door. 

The computers were in pieces. The drives, the disks...bits of  
broken plastic and glass-

"WILLIAM NO!"

He ran so fast he stepped through the glass, the pieces slicing  
into the bottoms of his bare feet. He grabbed William so hard  
the body cried out, the hammer tumbling to the floor.

"What are you DOING??" he cried, spinning William around. He  
had the boy's thin upper arms clenched so hard in his hands that  
William's face twisted to a wince.

"You're hurting me-"

"What are you doing? Tell me!" His eyes were wide enough to  
ache, his breath hissing between his clenched teeth. "TELL ME!"

"It's finished," William said, and he smiled. "The computers  
found the answer, Mulder."

"What...?" Mulder felt his mind swimming in a brine of  
confusion in his head. "But why did you destroy it, William?  
Why?"

William bent his arm at the elbow and Mulder looked down at his  
hand, the one that hadn't held the hammer.

The headset was there. And Mulder could see the faint  
indentations on William's temples, the faint burns of current  
going in.

He stopped, held his breath. "You..."

And William smiled as Mulder looked into his eyes, and Mulder  
saw it. Everything he was, everything Scully was. Right there  
behind the boy's eyes. 

"Why did you do it?" he asked, his voice faint.

"I've always known the final piece was inside me," William said  
softly. "I know that the final piece *was* me. But I couldn't  
know the answers because the things I needed to look at, you and  
Mother...you couldn't remember. You couldn't see." 

"Tell me," Mulder asked, his grip loosening, and he went down  
onto his knees in the rubble of the computers, the room deathly  
quiet now that there were no more running, clicking machines. 

Behind him, Scully had come in unsteadily, touching furniture  
as she drew nearer, tears in her eyes. She'd heard everything  
they'd said, the whole thing.

"You've always known it was within you both to stop them,"  
William began, looking at them in turn. "That's why you kept  
running. That's why they kept after you. That's why they  
killed the people who adopted me, and your friends...everyone  
you've cared for...and destroyed everything you had."

Mulder's eyes welled. "Yes," he nodded. 

"Three years ago," William continued, "they tried to use the  
chip in Mother's neck to find you. A burst to track you, to  
test to see if they could use it to find you. But it did  
something they didn't expect." He looked at Scully.

"The baby," she said softly. "I could conceive."

"Yes." William swallowed. "And when you became pregnant, the  
baby girl changed you, Mother. It changed what they'd done to  
you all those years ago. It changed what they'd done to you to  
produce me. You became yourself again." He smiled. "But in  
doing that, your baby girl...Grace...she had to go. And the  
cancer...the cancer was able to start forming and come back  
again." 

"But what--?" Mulder stopped, shook his head "no."

"They didn't know that could happen," William said into the  
silence. "And what they'd done to you," He looked at Mulder,  
"changed you, as well. The artifact. The dying and the virus  
and the time underground. You were never the same."

Scully's hand touched his shoulder, and Mulder looked up into  
William's face. "No," he said. "No, I wasn't. Not ever  
again." He put his hand on the side of William's shoulder, his  
thumb brushing his neck. 

"You know how to stop them," he said softly. Scully's hand  
squeezed down.

William nodded. "Yes." 

"How?" Scully asked, her voice gone. 

William looked toward the door just a faint rap sounded against  
it, and he called for whoever it was to come in. 

Mulder and Scully looked to the doorway as the figure came in. 

"Skinner...?" Mulder said, and he and Scully froze and Walter  
Skinner - dotted with snow on his black jacket, dotted as though  
he'd been spattered with white ink - came over to the desk and  
the circle of light from the lamp.

"Skinner," Scully said, releasing Mulder and going to the other  
man, who was old now, his face deeply lined. When Scully took  
him in her arms and cried against his shoulder, he seemed to  
have forgotten how to return an embrace, and stood like a statue  
for a moment, looking down, until he slowly closed her in his  
arms, his lids falling as he did so.

"Hello, Scully," he said softly. He opened his eyes and met  
Mulder's gaze. "Mulder." There was a trace of smile on his  
face. 

Mulder swallowed. "You," he said. "It's you who brought  
William here."

Skinner nodded. "I've been here since you came here yourself,"  
he said as Scully released him. "But I didn't want to come out  
in the open until the disks had done their work. I  
was...waiting for the call." He smiled down at William, his  
hand touching the boy's dark head. 

"Did you bring what I asked for?" William said, and Skinner  
nodded, reaching into his pocket and drawing out three wrapped  
syringes. 

"What are they for?" Scully asked. "A vaccine? A-"

William shook his head. "One is for the two of you," he said.  
"We'll draw out a sample of each of your blood. Then we'll  
inject both of your blood into me. And what you have in your  
bodies, your cells - even the cancer's trace cells, Mother --  
will be passed onto me. What happened to you to change you will  
happen to me." 

"What's the other syringe for?" Mulder asked, and William  
looked at Skinner, who smiled, his eyes shining in the light.

"Once everything we are has altered me," William said, "we'll  
take a sample of my blood and give it back to mother." 

Mulder felt the lump rising again. "What will...what will that  
do?"

William smiled. "Her cancer. It will go away."

Mulder felt something in him loosen and slip. His back  
actually bowed as his eyes closed, the tears slipping free. The  
voices floated around him as he felt, for the first time in  
three years, that he could breathe. 

"Why didn't you tell us any of this?" Scully asked. "William,  
why didn't you tell us before?" 

He raised the headset to her. "I didn't know until last night  
when the interface finished. But I know everything to do now.  
I know about Lily Rock-"

"It's almost pure magnetite," Skinner added.

Mulder nodded. It's why he'd chosen the town. It's why he'd  
stayed, for a scrap of hope.

"And I know about the light," William finished. 

Mulder felt William's hand on his chin, turning his face up  
toward his own again.

"They can't hurt us anymore," he said softly, and gave Mulder  
that strange, contented smile.

Mulder looked into his eyes. "Who are you, William?" he  
whispered, and the boy's eyes shone.

"Your son," he said. "I'm your son." 

 

****

 

"This may be done gradually...until a single new mind is formed."

 

17 LILY ROCK VISTA  
IDYLLWILD, CALIFORNIA  
8:35 p.m.  
DECEMBER 24, 2012  
CHRISTMAS EVE

 

Some of the townsfolk said it was the Christmas Star come back  
a few days early, and some said a meteor had streaked down -  
unexpected and unseen - from space. 

Some said it was the ghost of an Indian Princess, or a fire  
that had started up there somehow and gone out. 

But most said they hadn't seen the light that came off Lily  
Rock at midnight on the 21st of December, the town of Idyllwild  
asleep in the winter snow and the vacationers in the cities far  
away asleep after days of buying their things to put under their  
trees.

It had been picked up on the satellites, of course, as had the  
approach of something the government couldn't explain and the  
people never did see, and when the burst of light shot up from  
the San Jacinto Mountains in California and the approaching  
object had turned and disappeared, they had no explanation, but  
dispatched men to the mountains to search for the source.

They didn't find it, of course. Only three people had seen the  
young boy on the top of Lily Rock, channeling the force of the  
rock through his Changed Body, the whole mountain suddenly  
bursting with something like a nova, and his fingers -  
outstretched -- streaming with light. 

He sat now beneath a tree Mulder had cut from the woods behind  
the house, that William had hung with bits of plastic and glass,  
that they'd strung with a sad set of lights they'd found at the  
General Store in Mountain Center (clear whites like dots), and a  
string of popcorn that Scully had sat in bed and worked through  
with a needle she'd found in her suitcase, one she'd picked up  
during a stay in a motel in some town in Kansas a lifetime ago,  
when every one of them was someone else.

Walter Skinner stayed with them, and he and Mulder were playing  
a game of cards in the quiet, the fireplace crackling and  
sending up sparks. Scully slept on the couch, her color  
returning, her hand closed against her face. 

They'd have to move on soon and find another place to stay,  
this last move to somewhere they could stay. 

Nothing could hurt them any more, and everyone knew it. On  
earth and above it. But they didn't feel the need to go right  
away.

It was Christmas Eve, and in the middle of all of it, William  
sat beneath the tree. He had his knees curled up against his  
body for warmth, his arms crossed over them, his eyes wide on  
the tree, the lights dotting his face.

He looked at his mother and father, his friend Walter who had  
worked for so long to keep him safe. 

The men laughed at something, and Scully turned in her finally  
restful sleep.

William smiled and felt the warmth of the fire and the warmth  
of the lights, the warmth of the people and the warmth of the  
place. 

One person not here. One person to thank.

He whispered the name to himself, to celebrate, to mourn and to  
praise.

"Grace," he whispered. "Little Grace." 

 

****

 

END

**Author's Note:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks to Dani, Shari, Sue, Nancy and Revely  
> for betaing this story and for their enthusiasm for reading it  
> as I went along. Thanks to R. Paul McCarty for the section  
> headings, which follow the train of philosophical thought for  
> self-awareness that constitutes the underpinnings of Mind  
> Uploading, as detailed by the Mind Uploading Research Group. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. Have a wonderful holiday season, and a  
> joyous New Year.
> 
>  
> 
> Bone
> 
> 7 December 2004


End file.
